1. Technical Field
The present disclosure generally relates to information handling systems and in particular to data storage mechanisms of information handling systems. Still more particularly the present disclosure relates to enabling back-up of data objects stored on an object storage platform.
2. Description of the Related Art
As the value and use of information continue to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option available to users is information handling systems. An information handling system generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes thereby allowing users to take advantage of the value of the information. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements vary between different users or applications, information handling systems may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in information handling systems allow for information handling systems to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, information handling systems may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
One important function performed by information handling systems is the long term storage of data on one or more storage devices. There are many different types of such storage devices and systems implemented in the industry, included large scale storage systems designed for storage of vast amounts of data. One particular type of storage methodology currently in use is the object storage platform, which is primarily designed as a long-term archive storage platform. Object storage platforms provide what is generally referred to in the industry as Content Addressable Storage (CAS) and/or Fixed Content Storage (FCS). With this storage methodology, data is stored on disk rather than on tape. These object storage platforms can create multiple replicas for each object to protect against data loss, but do not support backup of data to a separate tape system. One concern created by this method of data storage is that if the data center in which the storage is installed is lost due to some failure, a complete loss of the data would occur because all replicas of the data will be lost. An available option to mitigate that risk of a full loss of data is to replicate objects to a remote site; however, this option is often expensive to implement and may take a long time to recover data in the event of total loss of the primary storage system.
Also, a large number of businesses require a backup of their data for regulatory compliance. Thus, many businesses use object storage for archive and compliance reasons. With the object storage platform, some objects are written as immutable, which means the object cannot be changed once the object is written. The drawback of not being able to back up the objects stored on the object storage platform to tape makes the use of object storage platforms as a permanent data storage solution not feasible for certain users who prefer or need to have their data backed up to tape.